


And In Giving

by Silberias, ThirteenthHour



Series: Through the Eyes of Dwarves [2]
Category: The Hobbit 2012 - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Gen, Reincarnation, Star-crossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 06:53:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silberias/pseuds/Silberias, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThirteenthHour/pseuds/ThirteenthHour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Thorin lays on his deathbed, he asks a last favor of the father of the woman he loves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And In Giving

**Author's Note:**

> Built from a series of headcanons built over the last year and change between ThirteenthHour and I. First headcanon being that Gimli is a female-by-birth Dwarf. Second being that Boromir (it matters) survived Ammon Hen. Third, Gimli and Boromir fell in love and lived happily(ish) ever after. We've got a lot of fic written, and both plan to slowly move it here to Ao3. Maybe. 
> 
> Then The Hobbit came out and we couldn't help but see Boromir in Thorin. And there's that whole Dwarven belief in reincarnation. So we came up with this.

Gloin had one of the last private moments with Thorin. The wails of comrades left behind sounded in the distance, Elven eulogies sung to the Valar, Dwarven death-chants, and the occasional human or orcish sob. The tent which had been hastily erected over the fallen Dwarf king did little to keep these sounds out, though it did provide privacy of action.

“She waits for you, she cared too deeply for either of us to stop her.”

Thorin’s eyes were far-away, and Gloin wondered if his comrade was imagining Gimli’s laughing face or her bellowing laughter. He hoped so.

“I told them to let me pass, Gloin,” the king softly said, eventually, his voice weak. “I am too broken, hollowed out, after the deaths of my sister’s children. I cannot be the husband to Gimli that she needs, and I’m a fool to have thought I might one day make her happy. She would live as my wife watching me die slowly, and live the rest of her own in bitterness. I cannot let that happen.”

“You would have me tell her that our doctors were too late then?”

A solemn nod, and a flick of a glance towards Gloin. The dwarf king’s eyes were filled with another kind of pain, and his voice was barely audible as he spoke.

“I fell to gold madness, Gloin. I fell as my grandfather did, as my own father was likely to, and thank the rocks that no marriage of mine would produce children for my heirs would inherit it as well. I have loved Gimli as well as I can for my part, but a marriage to one with gold madness is no marriage at all.”

With a grimace of pain, Thorin reached inside a pocket on his tunic and withdrew a small packet of parchment. In elegantly formed Khuzdul (that Gloin highly suspected the king might have learned from Bifur) it was addressed to Gimli dHokariak Gloin, head of the Ruby Lineage of Durin. Gloin took it and tucked it away in one of his own pockets. His daughter would treasure whatever words Thorin had had to spare for her over this long journey. Letters never sent, now to be delivered too late.

“Your stars were always aligned, Thorin-king, you will be given a second chance.” Thorin nodded, closing his eyes and pressing his mouth into a straight line as one of his wounds gave him some pain.

“Would you like me to get the burglar for you?”

“The hobbit? Yes, send him in. I believe I have an apology to make regarding a certain threat to throw him from a certain mountain of mine. Send for Dain, as well, I would see her face and cede my title to her properly before I am called back to the rocks.” Gloin stood with a nod, checking that he still had the letters for his daughter from her intended, and left the small tent. It would be a good while before Thorin died of his injuries—the healers had halfway fixed him before he’d ordered them to stop.

Secretly Gloin was glad to have had such a one as Thorin as king. That Thorin recognized that he would not recover from this battle—he would bleed his life away in grief and decay—and that in marrying him Gimli would be wedding a shadow of the one she loved. That Thorin would rather die than hurt her made Gloin intensely proud for the man and king that Thorin was. He put a broad hand over the pocket where the letters were secured—Gimli would be able to grieve and recover. Eventually she would live the rest of her life without bitterness, and the heart and spirit which belonged to her through Thorin would return to her.

Hopefully the next time they met, the man would be somewhat more whole than the one who had asked that he not be saved _._


End file.
